


On the other side of the veil

by Pigsinspaaace



Series: Roommates AU [2]
Category: Carry On - Rainbow Rowell
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-10
Updated: 2016-12-10
Packaged: 2018-09-07 16:47:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,444
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8808400
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pigsinspaaace/pseuds/Pigsinspaaace
Summary: Oaths, ghosts, guides. You know. The usual.





	

_First day of ninth grade, seven and a half years earlier_

**Lucy**

I hover anxiously as Penelope walks to school.

It's almost more than I can manage, to concentrate myself in one plane tightly enough to watch. I've used up everything I have trying to forge some kind of shield around Simon.

I know that what I'm doing isn't right. Using compulsion on Mitali and Martin was bad enough. I had no choice; it was the only way to bring Mitali to this town when Davy moved here. But at least they’re adults. And Mitali is my best friend. Was. Though. She never even tried to find me. Accepted all the lies (first mine, then Davy’s) about where I'd disappeared to. Let the hurt feelings cloud her normally inquisitive mind. Never even tried to push past the flimsy cover that had been pulled over the truth. So. I could never have said it in life, but. She owes me. It's too late for me. So. She owes Simon. And that's a debt I didn't hesitate to start collecting.

Compelling Penny is a different thing to do altogether. Even I hesitate to do it, though I will cross any lines to help Simon. So I will compel her, but only up to a point. I will compel her to seek out Simon. But what she does when she find him is up to her.

I have sworn an oath to my own spirit (which is a complicated bit of binding if I do say so myself) that if Penny and Simon don't get on, I won't force it. The self-absolving aspect of the oath is my conviction that if they do get on, I'll have done them a favor, bringing them together.

Either way, it couldn't wait anymore. I have used the last of the power that came with my death. My murder. Even now, I shrink from the word. The power is spent and I will fade soon. Simon needs someone on his side of the veil looking out for him.

If only I had been as brave in life as I find myself in death, Simon wouldn’t be alone, unprotected, in Davy's hands. And that is a sin I can never undo. But I'll barter what's left of my soul for the rest of eternity to try and keep him safe now. Or safer. Or give him a path to safety, and push him along it any way I can.

I've missed the whole meeting with all this whispered meandering. Penelope has already reached Simon. I missed the approach but I get a glimpse as I start to fade, of Mitali’s girl sitting beside Simon. Of Simon smiling at her. I'm fading. I have to hope it's enough, for now. That I've done enough, for now, before the years it will take for me to build up the energy to intervene again. I will rebuild. But now I disperse and there is nothing to hold and there is...

 _November 13_  
Fall of senior year  
Four and a half years ago.

**Lucy**

I find myself slowly (slowly) pulling inwards from outside. I am not sure what manner of spirit I am. Or we are. Or were? We are different from what we were. But that is not anything to know, if I don't know if I am or are, what I was or were.

Then the knowledge comes: I am one. Or I have been. I was. I will remain singular, still, because I need to act. Not only be. It is the whole of what I know. I need to act. I am woken. I have been asleep. Too long. Not long. Not enough, I protest. Not long enough. I am so empty. I should not be here. But the sense of urgency presses in. Wake. Wake. Wake. Be. Act.

When I wake, I am in a strange house. In a strange room. The door opens, and a man walks out. He has been to war. He is in hiding. He is not a man, he is a boy. He is covered with marks. He has been beaten. There is no war. Where has the boy been? Where is he now? The boy. I know him. Whatever I was before, it knew him. Knew the mess of hair like an open field. The beautiful face like a whispered promise. The sweet mouth twisted a grimace that tears me. Dull eyes that raise the volume that screams to me. Wake. Act. Be. Act. Wake.

Mine. His face. He. He is mine. I struggle to know. What does it mean for something to be mine? Someone? Some boy? I pull myself in. I will know. He is one of the living, and I am not. What am I, then? I gather and pull at myself and watch more closely. He closes his eyes in pain, and I try to weep but I cannot. Who would hurt such a boy? I know the answer, but I don’t want to know it.

He is naked, dripping with water. Cold. He is shivering, and wet. He walks to a wardrobe, removes small piles of fabric, looks at them askance. Pants. A t-shirt. Jeans. Jumper. He shrugs and it makes him wince. I remember now that the living layer themselves with cloth and leather and metal. They connect with the world awkwardly sheathed in skin (I am a woman I was a woman) skin too fragile, too open (I am a woman this is a boy) to pain.

This one too. The one who is mine. He needs more armor than this. This is what he has. It is not enough but it is too much for him. (Lucy I am Lucy) He is desperate to be covered. He holds his breath and pulls on the pants, the jeans. He looks young again for a moment, pleased with himself (Simon) and his eyes brighten. Only just. He is exhausted (Simon) his body his eyes his mind the center of him the center that pulses with life are dim, faded. So tired.

This should not be. I am growing angry (this boy is my heart ripped out of me) as I watch I am growing, building (I failed to protect him) as he (Simon, Simon) takes the cloth hem of the shirt, reaches his (simonsimonsimonsimons) hands above his head, fails to pull it over. (I am Lucy I was alive I was a woman this is my. Child. Simon, my child. What have I done what happened why have I done nothing why have I failed you. I have failed you. I am Lucy. I have failed.)

This time he is defeated and his eyes cloud with pain and he lets out a cry. The cloth falls to the ground and the boy follows (the boy the boy the boy my child) falling in a heap on the floor and bowing his head in resignation. Tears fall down his face and I move towards him (Simon Simon Simon this is Simon) though I don’t even know what it means to move (he is mine and I have failed him).

I lay my hand (a hand I have a hand now, for touching) gently on his brow. The contact snaps me fully into myself. I was Lucy. I died. My baby lived. Simon. I love him. I do not want to leave him. I stay bound to the living. I must protect him. I slept too long, too long, too long. There is someone else behind me but I cannot turn away from him. Then they are gone. I make another hand. I take both hands and use them to pull myself towards him. I kiss his clammy forehead. I draw away whatever pain I can. I draw out the pain and leave strength.

He looks up suddenly, startled, eyes darting around, unseeing. I embrace him and he shivers and the shiver is painful and so I withdraw. But I want to take away more of the pain I want to draw it out of him I want to find the creature who did this (I know the creature, it is my doing) and rip him in uneven shreds (the blood it is my doing I brought this boy to the creature why why why would I do such a thing to this boy) and throw the shreds to the furies and the hounds. A violence floods through me and I sense the edges of myself coming back to me and then I know again. I know and forget and know again, I find and lose and find the knowledge anew. I am Lucy. This is Simon. Davy’s son. My son. My doing. My fault. I would scream but it is not allowed here.

I see the child go still as a loud sound breaks the silence and the doorknob turns. I turn to the door, frozen in fear. This is why I fail. Always fail. The man will walk in and I will be frozen in his glare and he will own me and I will fail. I will freeze and fail when his predator’s eyes find me.

But it is not a man who walks in. It is a girl. The boy remains frozen in place, not moving his eyes to meet hers. It is strange. The girl is good. It flows out of her in sharp warm waves. Green leaves and roots unfurl around her and reach for the boy. She has power and wisdom and she loves the boy. But he is afraid, ashamed before her, and I don’t understand.

She (Penny her name is Penny I know this girl too she is a good thing I have brought to him) walks closer, slowly, carefully, gently, and sits beside him (Simon) and she (Penny) says something ( ) and he says something and she says something and then the fear and shame drain from his body and he leans softly against her.

She says something else and he laughs and then grimaces and then she looks sad. But then he says something and she smiles and they both laugh. And then he lets her help him. He lets her bring a towel. He lets her bring a box full of bandages and a bottle full of painkillers and soon he is smiling more and wearing all the layers of cloth he had chosen and they look sad but they laugh and they go out of the room, hand in hand.

I don’t know what I have done or why but I will set it right. I think that the girl finding the boy is my doing too. And that gives me the courage to do more. I let myself bleed through the house until it all comes back. Until I know everything I have known before. Then I spin into a whirlwind and explode to find them. I will raise an army I will wake the dead I will haunt the living I will be the revolution. I will find many. All of them. The others. Ebb. Fi. Nicky.

But I do not find them. I do not yet have the power for an army of spirits and bodies. But I do find something. Someone. One. I find Tasha. She is like me. She is one of us. One if the dead. I call to her with rumbling thunder and then stretch my ends until they find hers.

**Natasha**

Lucy is dead, or so it seems. She calls to me and arrives. She is a frantic mess of static and wind and dark smoke and rose petals. I surround her until she finds a form she can inhabit with more stillness, and then I let her go.

He killed her.

Lucy chose a devil and died for it. It makes me feel less wretched about the man I chose. Malcolm. Such weak satisfaction to have bequeathed Basilton a father who is a better man than Davy. That bar is too low. That feeling is spiteful, gloating. That is a danger in being so long dead. I will have to fight harder to keep from turning ever darker.

Neither Lucy nor I are blameless but neither of us is truly to blame. And blame doesn’t matter. What matters are the boys. Basil. Simon. I hadn’t known of Simon until Lucy arrived. Though it is also accurate to say that she’s always been here, that I’ve always known.

Our pains are different. I am pained by what Basil has become. She is pained by what has become of Simon. I let her follow me as I follow him. As he falls and falls and falls. Killing himself slowly, filling himself with poison, inflicting a fraction of his pain on others, strangers. Smirking through the muggings and beatings he first witnesses and then metes out and then orchestrates. I almost envy Lucy her pain. Her blameless child who is being hurt by a man we already knew to be a monster.

I cannot say how long we wander like that, together. Time has less meaning when you have no heart to act as metronome. At some point, Lucy stills. She contracts, expands. She glows brighter, darker. She spins. And then she drives my awareness towards a beautiful girl who is talking to Basil. I see it immediately. The girl is a guide. But what of it?

**Lucy**

A guide a guide I have found a guide and now I will use her I will bring the boys together I will piece together the prayer stones in a ring to surround the evil and bring it crashing down. The boys will be brought together, now that I have this girl to guide them.

Natasha is looking at me. She doesn’t understand what I intend, and then she does. She is horrified but I am past caring. These are the sins that can lose a soul, that can cause a soul to wander cursed and lost for eternity. To use humans as tools. To bend their wills, make them do our bidding. I have already done it. Once, twice. This will be the third. I will do it. Again.

I am already cursed. Already lost. I will never feel rest or ease. I can never make up for my carelessness in life. My unwillingness to see darkness for what it is. A blindness that inadvertently bound a perfect soul to the devil. The best part of my own soul. The only part that matters. Simon

There will be Simon. There will be Penelope. There will be Basilton. There will be three.

It is starting.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> So the idea is that the reason for all the weird coincidences with Agatha at their center, bringing everyone to the same place, might be that they're coincidences. Stuff like that happens. Or, it was the result of Lucy sacrificing herself to find a way to save Simon. In my mind, guides are people that attract people around them. They absorb a little bit of all the people they love, and guide them to one another.


End file.
